Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. It sounded like you had two narration tracks, one on top of the other with a normal voice quieter in the back ground and then Ug speaking more deeply in the fore ground. Because of the over laying nature of the narration - I couldn't understand either one. .
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  2. As to the "torpedo's" detonation not being in the Eagle's log ... it would depend on how far down the river it was and which way the wind was blowing. Given the speed at which a Design like the Turtle would move - I would not be surprised at a fairly lengthy fuse. Eagle Crewman #1: - "What was that?" Eagle Crewman #2: - [shrug] .
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  3.  @genericpersonx333  Actually ... had not Hitler and the Nazi's taken control of Germany ... such an alliance of Germany and the UK against the Soviets - who OBTW - may have taken Poland as well as the Baltic States ... might have been a real possibility. .
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  4. Yes. Exactly what I was thinking. It doesn't matter how thin it is - if the drill can't penetrate it. If you look at the Spar Torpedo on the Hunley it had the force of the submarine's ten man crew driving it through the water. Given the Turtle's design - it seems barely sufficient to drive it through the water - much less enough to punch a hole in anything. Any time I've had to drill through something like metal - I had to exert a good bit of force on the drill to get it to penetrate. I can't see how the sole operator of the Turtle could exert any force on anything. I'm amazed he was able to propel it through the water with a design like that. What is truly amazing about the Turtle is that it was able to actually try and attack a Warship. That was an incredible accomplishment. At least the Turtle didn't kill several of it's crews the way the Hunley did. The History of Submarines is replete with subs killing their crews. As a child - I saw the Thresher launched and knew one of the kids whose father was a Civilian Technician on it when it went down. .
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  5. "And where are these ships going, Pluskatt?" "They' are coming for ME!!! DIRECT!!!!" .
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  6. "For they have sown the Wind and shall reap the Whirl Wind!" Thanks for doing this. I knew what the general trend was but seeing the figures graphically displayed was interesting. I once attended a presentation on the money Spent on WWI, WWII and WWIII. The presenter displayed a graph with three giant spikes in it representing US Defense Spending in the 20th Century. He put his pointer on WWI. "This is World War One. We didn't spend the money - so we had to fight the war." He then put his pointer on the second vastly greater spike. "This is World War Two. We didn't spend the money so we had to fight the war." Then he put his pointer in the even larger (in raw dollars) third Spike. "This is World War Three. We spent the money so we didn't have to fight the war." .
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  7. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. Isaiah 6:8 .
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  8. "We're thinking Outside The Box!!!!" .
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  9. If you are a destroyer escorting something - and an enemy surface combatant comes along - you throw yourself at that enemy combatant or combatants - to give the thing you are escorting a chance to run away, all the while screaming on the radio for help. That is what you do. If you get sunk - you get sunk but that is your job. Even if you can't actually hurt the enemy combatant you are attacking - while they're sinking you - they aren't sinking the thing you are escorting. And - it is for this reason that you carry torpedoes. Your "main" armament may not amount to much but there are no surface combatants who want anything to do with a torpedo. So - even if you don't carry enough to make getting a hit a probability - the very threat of your torpedoes may well be enough to get the enemy to turn away to avoid them. The enemy can of course try to comb the wakes of your torpedoes by heading towards them but this increases the closing speed so much that it cuts down on their ability to comb those wakes successfully. If they head away from the torpedoes that cuts down that closing speed to give them a much better chance of combing the wakes. Getting them to turn away - increases the chances of the thing you are escorting to escape. Of course, this doesn't always work. The Glorious didn't get away and in the Battle off Samar - none of Taffy 3 should have. But - the Japanese commander got wounded - and that may have distorted his judgment ... as it has a tendency to do ... so he seized on a false report of the Americans being some where they were not ... then left. His cruisers were closing in on the baby flat tops and would have probably sunk them, like they did the Gambier Bay - but they were recalled and the sacrifice of the American destroyers - paid off. Of course the fact that the aircraft of like 9 small carriers were all attacking the Japanese surface combatants, was a factor in the confusion as well. .
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  10.  @JerrySeriatos  Barham .
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  11. HMS Compass Rose .
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  12.  @robertf3479  After the North Carolina got hit - she increased speed and left the area. The hit was supposedly actually serious but she was not limited in her ability to perform. She did take a while to fix though. This was part of the most successful torpedo spread ever. It sank the Wasp., damaged the North Carolina and sank a destroyer - all the way across the fleet from where the torpedoes were fired. .,
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  13. I remember these ships from the Avalon Hill Game "Midway" Oh ...and OMT ... once again it is The Battle OFF Samar ... . It IS as big an error to say "The Battle Of Samar" as it would be to say "The Battle OFF Trafalgar" ... .
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  14. HMCS Lockeprt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Lockeport Yes - the really did that with the sail. .
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  15. I read The Cruel Sea when I was 14 years old and can't see one of those Flower Class Corvettes with the mast in front of the bridge with out thinking about the Compass Rose and all the men IRL who died serving on such vessels. .
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  16. My Dad was in the Marines and eventually I was myself. I read a young persons history of the Marines from the school library when I was 10 and that transitioned me from wanting to be a Cowboy to wanting to be a Marine. During my High School years - Robert Leckie was my favorite author. I read Guadalcanal Diary and a number of Morrison's books. Eventually I read Franks book on the Campaign and also read a History of Marine Aviation in WWII - among other works that I can't recall just now. So I've been studying this campaign or parts there of for longer than most of you have been alive. And - it was truly joyful to listen to 3 well informed people talking about this campaign. I drank beer with a group of other history buffs for over 20 years and this reminded me of that. The Guadalcanal Campaign in 1942 was the last chance Japan had of avoiding utter disaster in the war, even if it wasn't much of a chance. I disagree with Jon that the Japanese ever could have won the campaign. Even after the shellacking Henderson received you will note - that the attempt to unload supplies the next day from the Japanese Transports - which in desperation were run aground - utterly failed. The airfield had been put right back into operation and those transports were sunk and their supplies destroyed. Here - the thing was - the Japanese Navy couldn't operate in daylight against the airfield and even if they had had spotter planes that survived American Air - it's uncertain they could have so destroyed the field as to take it out of operation for anything but a short period of time. The Americans had all the equipment there that had been used by they and the Japanese to build the air field - and could rapidly repair any damage done to it. As to New Guinea - the main factor (as I understand it) that prevented American Transports from supporting the Buna-Gona Campaign was a lack of charts for those waters. The "Rag Tag Fleet" MacArthur's people put together - was of much smaller ships - many of which may well have already operated in those waters so that even if they didn't have charts (and they themselves may have had them even if the Navy didn't) the crews of these ships might have been familiar enough with these waters to operate in them. The thing with the Kongos was that they were the only Japanese Capital Ships that were fast enough - due to their Battle Cruiser History - to operate with the carriers. And so - once again - we have that excellent researcher - Jon - whose conclusions are completely out to lunch. Yes - they may have been escorting a crappy little carrier at the moment - but - there were not going to be any more of them - and when they got some better carriers - using all the Kongos in the Guadalcanal Campaign they could lose them all the way they'd lost half of them in a few days. The decisive moment in the campaign was when Nimitz replaced Ghormley with Halsey. Whatever his later faults - Halsey, like Grant, would go right at the enemy regardless of his own losses - as each of these men understood - that their enemy could not replace his losses - but they could replace theirs. This point is well made in the discussion of that last battle. The Comment I loved the most was about people who stopped reading Mahan after the Decisive Battle. That was the Japanese to a T. They had all their submarines out chasing warships. They had some very notable results but - submarines are much more effective against merchant ships. One Japanese characteristic - is that they tend to develop their plans based on group consensus - but then - if they need to change their plans they tend to be inflexible. The best example of that is their attempt to avoid becoming a colony by becoming a colonial power. They just didn't seem to realize that that time had passed when they went about conquering China. They also don't seem to have noticed - that none of the Colonial Powers had let any of the other Colonial powers take ALL of China. Thus the Americans stopped supplying them with the oil they were using to rape Chinese cities. The big thing here though - is that you train the way you are going to fight - because you WILL fight the way you train. The Americans practiced Daylight Gunnery before the war and the Japanese practiced night battles. The thing with firing guns in a night battle - besides the fact that everyone can see you - is that after you do - the flash destroys your Night Vision and you can't see anyone else - unless they are on fire. Catch on fire - and EVERYONE shoots at you. Torpedoes were the weapon of Night Warfare - before Radar. You could fire your torpedoes without the enemy knowing you'd done so or even if you were there. The Americans had no torpedoes on most of their Cruisers and the torpedoes they had on their destroyers were horrible - in contrast to the Japanese - who had the best torpedo in the world. Very good points about the CIC and Radar especially that the Americans could actually field all of them they wanted. One of the things about the American/British Technological Team - was that things the British thought up - the Americans (besides the things they thought up themselves) could mass produce. The Germans were the only other participant that was on a par with the Americans and British Technologically - and they - couldn't come close to the Americans ability to mass produce things. Webster's remark pretty much sums up the Axis forces in WWII: "You have horses! What were you thinking?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyZK8k4gzyg No one else - not even the Russians - could touch that. .
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  17. Thank you. There's nothing that furthers the study of History better than sharing your sources. One suggestion though - write down Who you lend stuff to (and make sure you have their contact info ....) What you lent them When you lent it to them Guess why I say that ... .
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  18. First off - thanks for this. I knew a bit about the aircraft but learned some more. My personal summation would be that the UK took what it had and even if it wasn't really suited for it - made the best of it that they could. One thing this made me wonder about - was if that long nose on the Seafire - helped them develop the curved landing approach which they applied to the F4U's and which the US adopted when it decided to make a second effort at putting the Corsairs to sea. .
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  19.  @dboi1656  The goal of Sailors and Airmen it to destroy the enemy's equipment. The goal of the Infantry - is to destroy the enemy's bodies. .
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  20. The thing to remember about early developments like this - is that no one knew what they were doing with these things yet. It was from these early designs that they learned what to do and as importantly - what not to do, as well. .
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  21. These ships saw a tremendous amount of action early in the war. As to the removal of the torpedoes ... On the one hand - as the Japanese showed - Cruisers that are going to be in night engagements - should have torpedoes. On the other hand ... these ships, during the height of early war surface fighting (almost all at night) - would have been equipped with American ... not Japanese ... torpedoes ... so ... it may not have actually made all that much difference. Later in the war when they had fixed the American Torpedoes - American Radar was so good and Japan's Navy so reduced in capability that ... again ... it probably wouldn't have made much difference. .
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  22. Yeah. Those magnetic influence detonators could not take into account the fact that the earth's magnetic field was not consistent and might be different at the location the torpedoes were fired than it was at the place the detonator was calibrated. Since these torpedoes were designed to run below the ship so that it would detonate right under it's keel - if the influence exploder failed to set it off - it ran harmlessly beneath the ship and on into oblivion. The other possibility was that the torpedoes would detonate to soon and explode before they were close enough to damage the target. I don't know about the German Torpedoes but the American one's also had faulty depth gauges so that they ran deeper than set and fragile contact detonators that would break if they hit the target squarely instead of setting it off. A glancing blow though would set them off - which contributed to the mystery of just what was happening. For the Americans the fact that the Admiral running the submarines had been the one to play a large role in the development of these torpedoes also hindered investigations as he didn't want aspersions being cast on his torpedoes and he blamed the sub commanders for lack of aggressiveness. .
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  23. Yeah, you did see some Gallantry from the Germans early in the war. There was even an attempt by some Italian and maybe German submarines to tow some British survivors to an area where they could be rescued - but the British attacked them. The British were much more concerned about losing yet more ships and crews to submarines than they were about the survival of crews that had already been put in the water. Read "The Cruel Sea" for a lot of incidents involving the deaths of allied sailors. The book is a novel but it is based on the author's experiences in the war as related in some non-fiction books written before it. There is one incident where a merchant ship had been torpedoed and sunk. The British escort ship the characters in the book are on at the moment is looking for the submarine - and picks up a contact - right under the surviving crew - so - it attacks it with depth charges - killing those survivors. Afterwards, they realize - to their horror - that the sonar contact they had picked up - was the sinking hull of the merchant ship - not a German submarine. When the Bismarck was sunk - British warships were pulling survivors from the water - when there was a report of a submarine periscope - they broke off rescue efforts and the only survivors of the Bismarck's crew were the ones picked up before the report. This was in reaction to an incident in WWI when four British Armored Cruisers were sunk by a submarine because they thought that the first ship hit - had hit a mine - and were all stopped picking up survivors. They never did that again. Sometimes there were dedicated small ships detailed to rescue survivors and sometimes the escorts would do it - but a lot of men were left to die in the water because of fear of submarine attack. .
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  24. It was the depression. Testing costs money. "The More Money You Save In Peace Time - the More You Bleed In War." -Cracker Jack .
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  25.  @TTTT-oc4eb  Your arguments are irrelevant Bean Counter. When all these Capital Ships were designed - no one knew how things were going to shape out. You are also ignoring the fact that had Halsey left his Battleships to cover San Bernardino Strait things would look much differently than you have depicted. It wasn't the fault of the Iowa's designers that Halsey was stupid. Also - Halsey having been stupid not to leave them to guard the strait - THEN - he pulled them and sent them down there after it was to late - just as they were about to make use of those big guns on the Japanese decoy fleet. THEN you are ignoring the fact that the Japanese COULD have chosen to employ their main fleet off Guadalcanal - back when it could have made a difference - and the fleet actions we might have had then could have been much different. As to the slower classes of battleships before the Iowas - 1 knot can make a real difference over time. Yes - those classes could and did escort Carriers - but - the Iowa's were better at it - if for no other reason than they were faster. The speed of the Fleet Carriers - (Carriers being fast so they could get as much wind over the deck as they could) - was not the limiting factor if their escorts couldn't keep up with them. Also - as I believe I have pointed out to you in the past - there are only so many ships that can be fit in a fleet formation and still be in range of the ships they are protecting using WWII technology. Cruisers take up about the same amount of maneuver space as a Battleship. Thus - you can better fit battleships in a fleet formation to protect carriers with their AA than you can Cruisers. The closer they were - the more 5"/38 guns could participate and closer still more 40mm guns could participate. Fleet Defense is conducted in layers. First the Destroyers, then the Cruisers and then the Battleships - and then the Carriers. Trying to use Cruisers to protect the Carriers - is penny wise and pound foolish. You want as much protection as near the Carriers as you can get - and THAT - is what you get with Battleships in that role. The other thing is - those Cruisers had to come from some place - and them being used in the Center of the Formation - takes them away from the next layer out. Lastly - Battleships can take more punishment themselves - and not have to withdraw or be left behind because of damage than Cruisers. Smart Asses like yourself are not nearly as smart as they like to think they are. There are reasons why the term Bean Counter - is a pejorative. .
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  26. Yes. All these old friends from my days playing Avalon Hill's Jutland . I was in Jr. ROTC in High School and me and my friends played a lot of Avalon Hill Games. For someone who would go on to get a MA in History these games were fascinating in their display of historical maps, units and equipment. .
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  27. What? Thunderchild merely acted as expected of the RN. Just as did the Colonies Destroyers Off Samar. Do your job lads! Do your job! Why? Because you're there - and nobody else. .
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  28. At the end of WWII the US was awash in ships. So they sank a bunch of them @ Bikini, put some in moth balls and scrapped most of the rest. They scrapped the Enterprise ... if EVER there was a ship that should have been preserved as a memorial - the Enterprise should have been. Scrapping that ship was a crime. .
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  29. Thanks. That was interesting. Yes - they should have used her off Guadalcanal. .
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  30. Yes. That was nice to see another North Carolina video. As I mentioned last time - I was born in North Carolina and my father returned to Camp Lejeune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Base_Camp_Lejeune for his last assignment (which included sitting on a boat off Cuba in 1962). The day he retired we went to the North Carolina memorial on our way out. This was also the second model ship I ever built. So - I've always had an attachment to this ship and it's nice to see another video on it. One thing. As I mentioned last time - I dropped dimes in a can when I was 9 years old to help buy the North Carolina . I can understand why South Dakota didn't buy their ship as it would be somewhat difficult to get her there - but - I can't excuse Washington for not buying there's. .
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  31.  @rutabagasteu  That's not true. It's not like they had an easy time of it - but their reputation was worse than they deserved. Their real problem was poor tactics on the part of their pilots for fighting Zeros and being heavily outnumbered. In any case - they were certainly better than nothing - and were more than good enough to do some serious damage to the bombers the Japanese were using against these two ships. .
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  32. Good thing Elon Musk got interested in space ships ... .
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  33. Their problem, however competent their Navy was - was that as a nation - they were in over their head. Mikawa didn't engage the transports - which was what he should have done - because he knew that if he lost any of his ships - they could not be replaced. The Americans made mistakes and lost ships - but they were more than able to replace them. .
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  34. My and my war gaming buddies always thought that there was a certain logic to the turret placement. If you were winning - then you could chase your opponent with your full main armament. If you were losing - you could try to run way with all your secondary guns shooting back at any enemy destroyers trying to catch you. .
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  35. It is sad but these navies were way to big and the ships way to expensive to keep but a tiny bit of them. What I see as really sad - was the likes of the Enterprise going to the breakers. That ship was essential to the early war efforts of the US and it is a travesty that it was not preserved. Think what it would be like to walk the decks McClusky's dive bombers took off from at Midway. CV-6, USS Enterprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CV-6) I think the problem with the Enterprise - was that she didn't have a sponsor - like the Battleships named after states. They were going to make her a memorial in New York - but somehow the biggest city in the USA could not come up with the money ... When I was 9 I chipped in my dimes at school to buy the USS North Carolina and got to play on her July 1st 1963, an experience I've never forgotten and to this day - I have a USS North Carolina Souvenir pocket knife I bought that day at her gift shop. .
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  36. Yeah. Leave it to the British to come up with Cool Ship Names. HMS Battleaxe at your service, Sir! .
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  37. Yeah ... I look at such a big, powerful ship - and it's so hard to believe it was utterly destroyed. .
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  38. Another would be the St. Lo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_St._Lo The St. Lo was one of two Casablanca Class Escort Carriers to be renamed because of the new, larger carriers coming out after the Essex class - these ships giving up their names for the larger vessels. Here's a list of the ships of this class - showing the names of those that were changed. These two ships were originally going to be named Midway and Coral Sea but - when the Navy preferred to have more substantial ships named after these two battles - these ships were re-named the St. Lo and the Anzio Curiously - the new Midway Class carriers (the largest in the world for some time) also had a ship re-named. The second ship of the class, which was going to be named Coral Sea was re-named the Franklin Delano Roosevelt because of that Presidents death - with the name Coral Sea going to the third ship of the class. So - there were TWO aircraft carriers which were going to be named Coral Sea which ended up being named something else. None of the other ships were lost besides the St. Lo but ... the FDR had a somewhat troubled life and was scrapped 13 years before the actual Coral Sea with the Midway becoming a memorial ship in San Diego Bay. Of coarse ... the St. Lo had also previously been named the Chapin Bay so ... maybe it's really unlucky to have a ship re-named twice ... Just found out as I was researching this that the Anguilla Bay had been renamed the Salamaua ... was damaged - but repaired. .
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  39. Yeah, there's a lot to Anglo-Dutch history. The Dutch had a trading company in India as well as the colony of Indonesia. The Cape of Good Hope - was Dutch - which is where all the Boer's come from. And - that story about some guys buying the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 in beads ... those guys were Dutch and it was New Amsterdam then - not yet New York. .
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  40.  @0_1_2  "Of the 24 ships of the line that the Spanish fleet had, seven entered into combat, losing four, and it could even have lost its flagship had it not been for the actions of Cayetano Valdés, commanded by Infante Don Pelayo, who came to his rescue when he had already lowered his flag. It is said that he threatened the Spanish flagship with shelling it too if he did not immediately raise his flag." Courtesy of Google Translate from the Article: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_del_Cabo_de_San_Vicente_(1797) Which is in Spanish. .
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  41. Glad to hear no one got hurt. The USS Saratoga was participating in NATO exercises with a Turkish Destroyer sailing along side her when, through a misunderstanding of the terms used - and that it was supposed to only be simulated ... the Sea Sparrow Launcher was fired on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saratoga_(CV-60)#The_TCG_Muavenet_incident So ... things could have been worse ... The USS William D. Porter accidentally fired a torpedo at the USS Iowa while it was carrying President Roosevelt aboard ... https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022/10/12/that-one-time-the-us-navy-torpedoed-fdr/ Fortunately, this being an American WWII Torpedo - it detonated on it's own before it hit the ship the President was on. .
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  42.  @sergarlantyrell7847  Fletchers were not designed to be AA Destroyers or Picket Destroyers - they were always General Purpose Destroyers and the US just built so many of them (175) - that they used them for everything. .
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  43. Thanks. I was aware that it had occurred to the Navy that Carrier Attacks on Pearl Harbor might take place - but - not to the extent that they had taken place in practice. Attacking Hawaii seems to have been common place. These exercises did not however prepare the American Military for the fact that - yes - it could really be attacked. You look at the frequent reaction of individuals at Hawaii and it was disbelief that they were being attacked. Time and again reports of Enemy Forces were discounted as them being Friendly Forces or a mistake. There was no urgency to our response and no coordination between combat elements. The Transition between a Peace Time Military and a War Time one was brutal. .
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  44. Yeah. On those AA guns, when I was twelve years old we visited the North Carolina and the most fun I had was when I and my brother operated the 40mm Quad mounts. One of us manning the elevation and the other the traverse. That and playing with the 20mm mounts along the bow of the ship. Seeing the breeches to the 16" guns inside the turrets was impressive but ... you, as a visitor, couldn't rotate those turrets and elevate the guns. So - yes - the AA guns were the most fun as you could literally PLAY with those. .
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  45. Japanese Doctrine had their Carriers Operating in 2 ship Carrier Divisions. Here - their doctrine can be described as "One ship - with two hulls" . The Carrier Division would launch a single strike made up of planes from both ships. One Carrier would launch Dive Bombers and a few Fighters. The other Carrier would launch Torpedo Bombers and a few Fighters. This allowed them to get off a balanced Strike Group very quickly. Then - they would get off a Second Strike Group - with both ships launching the Dive Bombers and Torpedo Bombers they had not included in the first Strike Group. Now - one of the problems with this - was that these two ships were organizationally tied to each other. Thus - when Shokaku was heavily damaged at Coral Sea and Zuikaku lost much of it's Air Group - both ships went back to Japan and neither was a Midway. In Contrast when Yorktown was heavily damaged and it's air group shot up - they managed to fix it well enough to operate in a few days - and gave it Saratoga's Air Group - and it was at Midway. This is a very accurate illustration of Japanese Thinking. They come up with a very clever way of doing things - but - when that won't work because things have changed - their response is less than ideal. The Japanese Carrier Divisions that made up Kido Butai were Kaga & Akagi Hiryu & Soryu Shokaku & Zuikaku By combining all six of their Fleet Carriers - with over 400 aircraft - they just waltzed about the Pacific Stomping On People. The problem was that, trying to do to much at the same time, they didn't keep it together. If they had had six carriers at both Coral Sea and Midway - each would have been a different battle. .
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  46. And we thought things had just turned to shit ... when they really turned to shit ... .
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  47.  @genericpersonx333  Yeah. Nobody knew that. The other thing about the way the Americans did things - was that they were the richest most powerful industrial country in the world - and if they wanted to build all those 16" gun Battleships - they didn't care how much it cost. They weren't choosing between Battleships and Aircraft Carriers - they were building both and as many of each as they could. Other nations couldn't do that. I had some guy tell me once that the Four Engine Bombers the Americans built - took more resources to build than they destroyed. My response was - that, first off I doubted that - but - even if it was true - the Americans had the resources to use - and the Germans didn't have the resources to lose. Bean Counters think like that ... I'm retired now but when I was working ... I had to deal with RL Bean Counters and ... don't like the stupid sons of bitches .... The simple fact was - that the money they saved on things was going to be paid for in blood by the people using them ... I had been one of those people, my friends were some of those people and I worked with those people. So my enmity towards the little twits I encounter on YouTube is well earned ... At least no one is likely to die because of the little twits on YouTube. .
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  48. Thank you both and especially Matthew for a fascinating glimpse into a "bye gone era". The thing with history like this - is that you don't just see the story of a ship - but - of the people of it's time. This ship was part of the end of the Victorian Era that WW I brought about. People then had much different ideas about life and our place in it. Some of which are very much a loss that they are gone. I can remember the way the US was when I was a child in the years right after WW II - and we are sadly not the same people we were then. Some things were changed for the better but so much was lost for the worst. Here - we can see a time when - some ... people thought very differently than we do today. I wouldn't want to over do that as the past was certainly not all sweetness and light at any time - but - there were good things in the past that we have very little of today. That's the thing about History that is so fascinating. It's the "yes ... people really did that ..." aspect of it. I'm afraid my USNI Membership, along with my memberships in a lot of other things had to lapse when I went from being a well paid computer professional to being a ... retiree ... One of the somewhat inevitable aspects to how things really are ... along with the scrapping of so many historical ships ... including some now that I worked on. It's sometimes hard to believe that such massive, powerful ships are just ... gone ... Again - Thank you both. .
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  49. From my days of reading about the age of sail - I read that the Spanish and French Ships, on which more care had been spent - were actually better made than the British Ships - which were being cranked out to try and keep the RN's number's up. Thus - capturing one of these ships would end up giving the RN a pretty good ship to use themselves - and they were preferred by their crews. .
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  50. Thanks. One thing you could do - that would be supremely useful to other historians - would be to post a list of each of your books. Something sort of like the Card Catalog you would have access to in a Library. Author, Title, Subject, Publisher and a brief description would be priceless for a historian. With that information - a Historian could make a stronger effort to find and achieve access for themselves to such books. One thing they could do - besides the obvious use of such as Amazon - would be to visit their local Libraries for their Cities and Universities and see what they had access to. Some of these books could be available through Inter-Library Loan - where one Library would Lend the book to another Library - for you to access. One thing about right now - is that it is my estimation - that there are still far more books in Libraries than are accessible Online. The Internet, I believe, was in existence when I was researching my Thesis but - only a relatively few had access to it. So - all the research I did - was through my University Library - and the Library of another Local University. .
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